EVENTS

The Israel lobby-3: The tide turns against the lobby?

In the first post in this series, I looked at the main arguments made by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt in their book The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy. In the second post, I described how they defined the lobby and how it works. In this last post, I look at how their book has stimulated a closer examination of the work of the lobby and the policies it advocates.

The authors point out that despite the strenuous efforts of the lobby, the US public still generally wants a more even-handed approach to the Middle East but that this wish is ignored by the administration and Congress because of the ability of the lobby to influence actual policymakers. (p. 227)

The authors point out that the lobby does not even represent majority Jewish opinion in the US. Although the lobby played a key role in this country’s decision to invade Iraq, surveys show that American Jews are opposed to that plan in even greater numbers than the general population. In 2005, 77% of American Jews were opposed to the Iraq war, compared with 52% of the American public. American Jews play prominent roles in the antiwar movement and in the opposition to the drive to attack Iran, another policy strongly favored by the lobby. In fact, many American Jews have been among those critical of the unconditional support that the US government provides Israel, which they feel has resulted in the Israeli government pursuing policies that are harmful to Israel and unjust towards Palestinians. The authors argue that members of the lobby are influential with the US policy establishment but are out-of-step with the average population of American Jews. (p. 243)

The reason that the lobby seems to be perceived as representing majority Jewish opinion in the US is that alternative Jewish groups that oppose the lobby’s politics have had to fight the Israel lobby to make their voices heard. The lobby has been quite successful at silencing dissent within the Jewish community and shutting down even any discussion of the lobby’s influence. Thus alternative groups face stiff opposition when they try to organize, often being accused of being anti-Israel, and the lobby strongly canvasses people within the Jewish community to reject those groups and not join them. American Jews who are critical of Israeli government policies are made to feel that they need to keep their criticisms ‘inside the family,’ that to voice them publicly is to be disloyal to Israel. This has resulted in the Israel lobby being able to give the misleading impression that they speak for most, if not all, American Jews.

For example, the authors point out how Kenneth Roth of the group Human Rights Watch was attacked when his group produced a report critical of Israel’s use of cluster bombs in Lebanon. Roth was accused of making a ‘blood libel’, participating in the ‘de-legitimization of Judaism’ and employing ‘a classic anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews.’ This was despite the fact that not only is Roth Jewish but his father was a refugee from Nazi Germany (p. 329).

As Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks says “[W]hat’s most troubling about the vitriol directed at Roth and his organization isn’t that it’s savage, unfounded and fantastical. What’s most troubling is that it’s typical. Typical, that is, of what anyone rash enough to criticize Israel can expect to encounter. In the United States today, it just isn’t possible to have a civil debate about Israel, because any serious criticism of its policies is instantly countered with charges of anti-Semitism.” (p. 329)

Mearsheimer and Walt argue that the reason for this swift and almost hysterical response to criticisms of the policies advocated by the lobby is because those policies cannot really withstand open scrutiny. The only way those policies can be implemented is if there is no debate at all either of the policies themselves or of the lobby that is agitating for them. This silencing strategy takes the form of alleging that those who raise such issues are either anti-Semitic or resurrecting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or perpetuating the ‘blood libel’. The point of making such allegations is not because they are credible but to shift the debate from the merits of the policies to the motives of the critics of the policy.

But such sweeping broad-brush characterizations of legitimate critics may now be backfiring. This tactic of trying to silence criticism with such rhetorical sledgehammers may have been taken too far. As Mearsheimer and Walt say:

Condemning neo-Nazis or Holocaust deniers is a worthy enterprise, but smearing respected individuals such as Jimmy Carter, Richard Cohen, Tony Kushner, or Tony Judt, or attacking progressive groups like the Union of Concerned Zionists, is something very different and disturbing. The more the lobby’s hard-liners attack any and all critics, the more they reveal themselves to be out of step with the broad American commitment to free speech and open discussion. And once virtually any criticism of Israel becomes equated with anti-Semitism, the charge itself threatens to become meaningless. (p. 353)

Times are changing and the role of the lobby has become increasingly scrutinized and alternative voices are springing up. More and more American Jews are getting frustrated at the way the lobby acts as though it speaks for all of them and are looking for ways to voice alternative views. The discussion over the Mearsheimer and Walt book has definitely opened the doors to such a discussion.

It is in Israel that more cogent criticisms of the lobby can be found because the tactics used by the lobby to inhibit debate in the US simply will not work there. Uri Avnery gives a favorable review of the Mearsheimer and Walt book. Akiva Eldar, the chief political columnist and senior analyst for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and co-author of a new book critical of Israeli settlement policy called Lords of the Land: The Settlers and the State of Israelsays that the lobby is even out of step with the reality on the ground and says that 70 out of 120 Knesset members want a two-state solution behind the 1967 boundaries but the Israel lobby in the US has strongly opposed this plan, favoring instead settlement policies that are becoming a huge stumbling block to any long-term solution.

Mearsheimer and Walt said that one of their main goals in writing their articles and book was to open up the broader debate on the role of the Israel lobby as a means to creating a more open debate on what US foreign policy should be in the volatile Middle East region.

It seems like they have succeeded.

POST SCRIPT: Mearsheimer on Colbert

One measure of whether a person or an idea has entered the broader culture is when it shows up on The Daily Show and/or The Colbert Report. John Mearsheimer appeared on the latter. It is a typically funny Colbert interview but also pretty good at hitting some of the main points raised in the book.

Comments

The Israel Lobby is dedicated to the realization of the Zionist dream which is promoted by Jewish religious extremists. These extremists are politically organized in Israel and exert considerable influence on the decision-making processes of the Israeli government regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (In spite of the influence of these extremists in Israel and the United States, there are many Jews who, although supporting the existence of the state of Israel, reject Israeli expansionism and support a two-state solution based on justice and fairness).

Zionism comes from the bowels of the Old Testament. A book written by self-serving Jews for their own convenience.

The Zionist fanatics’ aspiration is to use every means possible to create a incontestable “Eretz Yisrael” (Land of Israel) stretching between the rivers Nile and Euphrates:
“…On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’” (Genesis 15:18-21)
To accomplish this, the territorial integrity and, perhaps, the very existence of five nations (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq) has to be compromised. If the world allowed Israel to pursue such a schizophrenic course what would be the consequences? Armageddon?!!!

In a display of chutzpah even more galling than the Balfour Declaration, the first Zionists invented a God who “commanded them” to commit genocide. After declaring that their God gave them land which had belonged to other peoples for thousands of years, the spiritual ancestors of today’s Zionists embarked upon a campaign of mass murder:
“…In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.” (Deuteronomy 20:16-17).
The Jebusites were the people of Jerusalem, and like the other nations that were slated for destruction, they had no quarrel with the Israelites. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that The People Of The Book were bent on genocide according to the modern definition of the word:
“They should be utterly destroyed and should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Moses . . Utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling…”(Joshua 11:20, First Samuel 15:3).

By the end of the 19th century, using the lessons provided by their religious books, they managed to elevate themselves to positions of economic and political power [the Rothchilds, Disraeli, (Prime Minister of England)] which enabled them to influence the decisions of the Superpowers that eventually allowed them to reclaim part of the land which they had originally grabbed, claiming that “God had promised it to them”. But that land was already occupied for thousands of years by the Palestinians (descendants of ancient Canaanites and Philistines); and the Palestinians had to be evicted sometimes by the same methods that the ancient Jews used: Genocide and extermination.

Item: For the past 59 years, Israel has pursued a policy of brutal oppression against a people whose homeland was arbitrarily taken away from them. During the same period, Israeli occupation forces have killed thousands of Palestinians and never hesitated to kill unarmed Palestinian children or to arrest and torture them in order to elicit from them information regarding members of resistance organizations including possibly their parents.

Item: It is documented that a large portion of the US financial aid to Israel is used for the construction of settlements most of which are on illegally occupied territory. Many of the settlement homes are used by American and European Jews as summer vacation or retirement homes.

Item: Whereas Israel owes its existence to a United Nations resolution, it has repeatedly violated the provisions of the U.N. charter and with the concurrence of the United States arrogantly thumbed its nose to subsequent U.N. resolutions regarding its borders, and its persistent violations of the human rights and civil liberties of Palestinians.

Item: The U.S. legislative and executive branches, kowtowing to the powerful Zionist lobby (11 Senators, 26 Congressmen, tens of pro-Zionist organizations, many Zionists in key decision-making positions), have blindly aligned themselves with Israel giving over two hundred billion dollars of US taxpayers’ money in economic and military aid to Israel’s oppressive regime. US arms were -and are still being- used against Palestinians. (The total cost in lives and financial resources incurred by the United States in its support for Israel to date is immense). This selective, one-sided, US policy has aptly branded the US as an accomplice to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and is the root cause of many terrorist acts against the United States.
Item: In the absence of any other rational explanation for the blind subservience to Israeli interests, would it be unreasonable for one to assume that some of the aid funds are sent back to the United States and are given to American-Jewish organizations or individuals who, in turn, pass them on as political contributions to both party candidates for office in order to secure their support for the Israeli cause?

Item: There are some people who say that Israel is a friend of the United States and deserves such unquestioned support. The intentional Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, killing 34 and wounding 172 American servicemen (http://www.ussliberty.com) is indicative of the absurdity of such blind support of Israel. As one of the survivors of the attack stated: “With friends like Israel, the U.S. needs no enemies”

Item: During WWII, in virtually all the Nazi-occupied countries in Europe, the patriotic resistance against the occupiers was encouraged and actively supported by the United States. Many of the freedom-fighters did not hesitate to place their own lives on the line in the cause of freedom from their Nazi oppressor. The similarity with the acts of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation forces is evident and a distinction should be made between freedom-fighters and terrorists.

Item: Many of the past and present Israeli political and military personalities had also been leaders or members of Zionist terrorist organizations such as the “Irgun Z’vai Leumi”, “Stern Gang”, “Haganah”, “Giddy Paglin”, “Palmach” etc. (The assassination of U.N. mediator Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte was an act of one of these organizations). These Zionist organizations “wrote the book” on modern terrorism which, until their appearance, constituted but random and isolated acts by anarchists.

Item: When Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister of Israel, he had adopted the satanic ploy of demanding from Palestinian Chairman Arafat to “rein-in the terrorist groups”. This impossible-to –comply-with demand had allowed Sharon to launch his hard line campaign of assassination and destruction with presumed impunity. Unfortunately, this absurd demand had also been echoed by President Bush. Given the facts that there are almost 3.5 million Palestinians living in Israel the West Bank and the other occupied territories and that every Palestinian family has been brutally victimized by the Israeli occupation forces, how in the name of reason could Yasser Arafat know who the next Palestinian -who had had sufficient reasons to seek revenge and, in his or her desperation, was determined to sacrifice his or her life to achieve it- be reined-in? Furthermore, How could Arafat arrest resistance fighters when the Israeli occupation forces systematically targeted Palestinian police installations and policemen? Needless to say, similar irrational demands are constantly made on the Palestinians by the intransigent Israeli government. Such demands seem to have one purpose: to stonewall any final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Out of the tragedy of the terrorist atrocities of September 11th, renewed hopes had also emerged that a permanent solution would be found to the 59-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of a solution, and in spite of the obvious ability of the U.S. -as the sole Superpower- to impose one, we became witnesses to a severe deterioration of the situation with hostilities from both sides. In light of this, the US foreign policy, blatantly supportive of Israel’s aggressive posture, has to be re-evaluated using more pragmatic and objective criteria. For a correct assessment of that situation, one has to view the above historical facts through their proper perspective. By so doing, one will discover one of the real causes of the September 11th attack on the United States. (The other being the unabashed U.S. support of oppressive regimes in Muslim nations.)

Is there a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? The answer is YES! But the solution has to be fair and just, based on international laws and treating both parties impartially and without prejudice.

In order to bring an end to the wanton killings and to the suffering of millions of people, and since the United States government is the key sponsor and supporter of Israel, the initiative rests with the United States. However, any final agreement has to be endorsed and enforced by the United Nations.

Following are some suggestions for a viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

A. To begin with, and under pain of U. N. sanctions, an immediate cessation of all hostilities must be IMPOSED on both sides.

B. The city of Jerusalem should be completely demilitarized and declared a neutral “Holy City” protected by the United Nations.

C. Israel must be compelled to:
1) Declare unequivocally that it has no aspirations to any land other than that whose boundaries were defined in the U.N. Declaration which established it as a state.
2) Withdraw from the occupied territories including all the illegal settlements and the Golan Heights.
3) Accept the creation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian State. (Israel will have no say in all matters of the structure of the Palestinian state such as political, economic and military).
4) Allow the return of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes under the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign.
5) Provide just compensation for the homes and lands previously owned by Palestinians and forcibly appropriated by Israel or return such homes and lands to their rightful owners.
6) Accord and guarantee equal human rights and civil liberties to all Palestinians who choose to live within Israel as stipulated by the U.N. resolution which created the state of Israel.
7) Adhere to all U.N. resolutions aimed at establishing peace in the region.
8) Sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.
9) Recognize the authority and jurisdiction of the World Court as the sole arbiter of disputes regarding international law.
10) Provide the World Court with all necessary assistance to prosecute anyone within Israel guilty of crimes against humanity.

D. The Palestinians:
1) Must accept that the existence of the state of Israel is a fact with which they must live.
2) They must refrain from future hostile acts against Israel.

When Israelis and Palestinians have fulfilled their obligations, the Palestinians can redirect their energies into building a peaceful and prosperous nation without animosity for their neighbors. Time can be relied-upon to heal many wounds opened by both sides.

Both sides must exclude the religious fanatics from the peace-making processes.

The Arab Union nations must also recognize Israel as an independent sovereign state.

Unless both sides can “bite the bullet” and sincerely work towards establishing permanent peace, it is obvious that the world can anticipate the open wound of their conflict to become an incurable gangrene that would cause the demise of the afflicted and perhaps the entire humankind.

The Israel Lobby is dedicated to the realization of the Zionist dream which is promoted by Jewish religious extremists. These extremists are politically organized in Israel and exert considerable influence on the decision-making processes of the Israeli government regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (In spite of the influence of these extremists in Israel and the United States, there are many Jews who, although supporting the existence of the state of Israel, reject Israeli expansionism and support a two-state solution based on justice and fairness).

Zionism comes from the bowels of the Old Testament. A book written by self-serving Jews for their own convenience.

The Zionist fanatics’ aspiration is to use every means possible to create a incontestable “Eretz Yisrael” (Land of Israel) stretching between the rivers Nile and Euphrates:
“…On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’” (Genesis 15:18-21)
To accomplish this, the territorial integrity and, perhaps, the very existence of five nations (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq) has to be compromised. If the world allowed Israel to pursue such a schizophrenic course what would be the consequences? Armageddon?!!!

In a display of chutzpah even more galling than the Balfour Declaration, the first Zionists invented a God who “commanded them” to commit genocide. After declaring that their God gave them land which had belonged to other peoples for thousands of years, the spiritual ancestors of today’s Zionists embarked upon a campaign of mass murder:
“…In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.” (Deuteronomy 20:16-17).
The Jebusites were the people of Jerusalem, and like the other nations that were slated for destruction, they had no quarrel with the Israelites. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that The People Of The Book were bent on genocide according to the modern definition of the word:
“They should be utterly destroyed and should receive no mercy but be exterminated, as the Lord commanded Moses . . Utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling…”(Joshua 11:20, First Samuel 15:3).

By the end of the 19th century, using the lessons provided by their religious books, they managed to elevate themselves to positions of economic and political power [the Rothchilds, Disraeli, (Prime Minister of England)] which enabled them to influence the decisions of the Superpowers that eventually allowed them to reclaim part of the land which they had originally grabbed, claiming that “God had promised it to them”. But that land was already occupied for thousands of years by the Palestinians (descendants of ancient Canaanites and Philistines); and the Palestinians had to be evicted sometimes by the same methods that the ancient Jews used: Genocide and extermination.

Item: For the past 59 years, Israel has pursued a policy of brutal oppression against a people whose homeland was arbitrarily taken away from them. During the same period, Israeli occupation forces have killed thousands of Palestinians and never hesitated to kill unarmed Palestinian children or to arrest and torture them in order to elicit from them information regarding members of resistance organizations including possibly their parents.

Item: It is documented that a large portion of the US financial aid to Israel is used for the construction of settlements most of which are on illegally occupied territory. Many of the settlement homes are used by American and European Jews as summer vacation or retirement homes.

Item: Whereas Israel owes its existence to a United Nations resolution, it has repeatedly violated the provisions of the U.N. charter and with the concurrence of the United States arrogantly thumbed its nose to subsequent U.N. resolutions regarding its borders, and its persistent violations of the human rights and civil liberties of Palestinians.

Item: Under international law, it is illegal to settle land seized in war; however, there are over 300 illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The majority of these settlements are sponsored by the Israeli government which provides them with the necessary infrastructure facilities.

Item: The U.S. legislative and executive branches, kowtowing to the powerful Zionist lobby (11 Senators, 26 Congressmen, tens of pro-Zionist organizations, many Zionists in key decision-making positions), have blindly aligned themselves with Israel giving over two hundred billion dollars of US taxpayers’ money in economic and military aid to Israel’s oppressive regime. US arms were -and are still being- used against Palestinians. (The total cost in lives and financial resources incurred by the United States in its support for Israel to date is immense). This selective, one-sided, US policy has aptly branded the US as an accomplice to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and is the root cause of many terrorist acts against the United States.
Item: In the absence of any other rational explanation for the blind subservience to Israeli interests, would it be unreasonable for one to assume that some of the aid funds are sent back to the United States and are given to American-Jewish organizations or individuals who, in turn, pass them on as political contributions to both party candidates for office in order to secure their support for the Israeli cause?

Item: There are some people who say that Israel is a friend of the United States and deserves such unquestioned support. The intentional Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, killing 34 and wounding 172 American servicemen (http://www.ussliberty.com) is indicative of the absurdity of such blind support of Israel. As one of the survivors of the attack stated: “With friends like Israel, the U.S. needs no enemies”

Item: During WWII, in virtually all the Nazi-occupied countries in Europe, the patriotic resistance against the occupiers was encouraged and actively supported by the United States. Many of the freedom-fighters did not hesitate to place their own lives on the line in the cause of freedom from their Nazi oppressor. The similarity with the acts of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation forces is evident and a distinction should be made between freedom-fighters and terrorists.

Item: Many of the past and present Israeli political and military personalities had also been leaders or members of Zionist terrorist organizations such as the “Irgun Z’vai Leumi”, “Stern Gang”, “Haganah”, “Giddy Paglin”, “Palmach” etc. (The assassination of U.N. mediator Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte was an act of one of these organizations). These Zionist organizations “wrote the book” on modern terrorism which, until their appearance, constituted but random and isolated acts by anarchists.

Item: When Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister of Israel, he had adopted the satanic ploy of demanding from Palestinian Chairman Arafat to “rein-in the terrorist groups”. This impossible-to –comply-with demand had allowed Sharon to launch his hard line campaign of assassination and destruction with presumed impunity. Unfortunately, this absurd demand had also been echoed by President Bush. Given the facts that there are almost 3.5 million Palestinians living in Israel the West Bank and the other occupied territories and that every Palestinian family has been brutally victimized by the Israeli occupation forces, how in the name of reason could Yasser Arafat know who the next Palestinian -who had had sufficient reasons to seek revenge and, in his or her desperation, was determined to sacrifice his or her life to achieve it- be reined-in? Furthermore, How could Arafat arrest resistance fighters when the Israeli occupation forces systematically targeted Palestinian police installations and policemen? Needless to say, similar irrational demands are constantly made on the Palestinians by the intransigent Israeli government. Such demands seem to have one purpose: to stonewall any final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Out of the tragedy of the terrorist atrocities of September 11th, renewed hopes had also emerged that a permanent solution would be found to the 59-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of a solution, and in spite of the obvious ability of the U.S. -as the sole Superpower- to impose one, we became witnesses to a severe deterioration of the situation with hostilities from both sides. In light of this, the US foreign policy, blatantly supportive of Israel’s aggressive posture, has to be re-evaluated using more pragmatic and objective criteria. For a correct assessment of that situation, one has to view the above historical facts through their proper perspective. By so doing, one will discover one of the real causes of the September 11th attack on the United States. (The other being the unabashed U.S. support of oppressive regimes in Muslim nations.)

Is there a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? The answer is YES! But the solution has to be fair and just, based on international laws and treating both parties impartially and without prejudice.

In order to bring an end to the wanton killings and to the suffering of millions of people, and since the United States government is the key sponsor and supporter of Israel, the initiative rests with the United States. However, any final agreement has to be endorsed and enforced by the United Nations.

Following are some suggestions for a viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

A. To begin with, and under pain of U. N. sanctions, an immediate cessation of all hostilities must be IMPOSED on both sides.

B. The city of Jerusalem should be completely demilitarized and declared a neutral “Holy City” protected by the United Nations.

C. Israel must be compelled to:
1) Declare unequivocally that it has no aspirations to any land other than that whose boundaries were defined in the U.N. Declaration which established it as a state.
2) Withdraw from the occupied territories including all the illegal settlements and the Golan Heights.
3) Accept the creation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian State. (Israel will have no say in all matters of the structure of the Palestinian state such as political, economic and military).
4) Allow the return of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes under the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign.
5) Provide just compensation for the homes and lands previously owned by Palestinians and forcibly appropriated by Israel or return such homes and lands to their rightful owners.
6) Accord and guarantee equal human rights and civil liberties to all Palestinians who choose to live within Israel as stipulated by the U.N. resolution which created the state of Israel.
7) Adhere to all U.N. resolutions aimed at establishing peace in the region.
8) Sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.
9) Recognize the authority and jurisdiction of the World Court as the sole arbiter of disputes regarding international law.
10) Provide the World Court with all necessary assistance to prosecute anyone within Israel guilty of crimes against humanity.

D. The Palestinians:
1) Must accept that the existence of the state of Israel is a fact with which they must live.
2) They must refrain from future hostile acts against Israel.

When Israelis and Palestinians have fulfilled their obligations, the Palestinians can redirect their energies into building a peaceful and prosperous nation without animosity for their neighbors. Time can be relied-upon to heal many wounds opened by both sides.

Both sides must exclude the religious fanatics from the peace-making processes.

The Arab Union nations must also recognize Israel as an independent sovereign state.

Unless both sides can “bite the bullet” and sincerely work towards establishing permanent peace, it is obvious that the world can anticipate the open wound of their conflict to become an incurable gangrene that would cause the demise of the afflicted and perhaps the entire humankind.